Inward Worker Remittances and Economic Growth: The Case of Bangladesh
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Abstract
It is commonly believed that for development economies, inward worker remittances are an important financial instrument to boost economic growth. This study investigates the relationship between inward worker remittances and economic growth for the case of Bangladesh. The study applies an Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) bounds testing approach based on 28 years of World Bank and IMF data. The paper adds to the literature by considering Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Official Development Aid as additional foreign sources of economic growth. In contrast to common belief and most prior results, the findings of this study indicate that worker remittances do not have a significant impact on economic growth. Rather, economic growth is mainly spurred by changes in Bangladesh’s capital stock and by FDI inflows. Thus, while worker remittances are certainly important for receiving families, their impact on economic growth needs to be enhanced by incentivizing a more growth-conducive use of remitted funds.
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The paper is published under CC BY-NC-ND, in which the article is freely downloaded and shared in its original form non-commercially and its citation details are identified.
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